John's Blog

Rudy Giuliani doesn't know what a community organizer is. What a surprise. He's the kind of corrupt and smug pharisee that people have to organize against. Community organizers create "social movements by building a base of concerned people, mobilizing these community members to act, and developing leadership from and relationships among the people involved. Community organizing creates "social movements by building a base of concerned people, mobilizing these community members to act, and developing leadership from and relationships among the people involved." (Wikipedia) In other words, it's a synonym for democracy. We're thankful now that Rudy's career has gone the way of his first two marriages. Rudy's the darkness before the bright, beautiful new morning.

When I was in college everyone I knew read community organizer Saul Alinsky's book Rules for Radicals. it was our bible. And it was dedicated to the first man to ask the impertinent question: "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins--or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer." That and Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Hillary Rodham Clinton did her senior thesisat Wellesly on Saul Alinsky. Michelle Obama gave a nod to Alinsky in her DNC speech. Here's Alinsky: “The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive — but real — allies of the Haves…The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means… The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be."